The Distillation

"For the people who have invested so much hope in... [the] UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on drugs, the official agreement it produced – the “outcome document” – represents a shocking betrayal. History will look no more kindly on them than climate change deniers today, or defenders of apartheid in the 1980s."

This UNGASS has not been a victory for the drug warriors. The UN drug control system was faced with a choice: evolve or die. They have chosen the latter. It now falls to reform-minded states and civil society to build something better from the ashes of this UNGASS. And neither are the civil society groups and campaigners simply going to give up. If anything their resolve and networks has been dramatically strengthened. The UNGASS has acted as a rallying point around which multiple voices and issue groups have unified, found a common voice and reached out to new audiences. f you want the real story of this UNGASS, don’t look at what’s in the outcome document, look at what’s not in it – the submissions from UN human rights agencies, UNAIDS, and the UN Development Programme, the UNGASS plenary statements from Colombia, Uruguay, Jamaica, Canada, the Czech republic and others – and listen to the voices of civil society, the drug war’s victims and their families. That’s where the future lies.

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